Professional Service Marketing…And 20 Live Music Performances??

June 18, 2012

Over the past 8 days, I experienced 20 performances of live music. The performers were some the world’s best from more than 20 countries.

It was great.

But how does the experience connect with professional service marketing, which after all, is the overall theme of this blog?

Achievable Challenges

At first glance, it seems difficult to establish any kind of relationship.

However, there are some very interesting connections…really!

The most obvious connection is that both professional activities are achievable challenges.

In each case, the process of meeting the challenge starts with identifying specific outcomes to be achieved.

Musically, I wanted to experience 20 live performances over a period of 8 days.

From the perspective of marketing our professional services, we want to attract more and hopefully better clients. But that’s like saying “I want to see live music.” Nice…but not good enough.

How many new clients do you want? What would make them better than the clients you have? And over what period do you want to attract these clients?

Once we have identified the specific results we want, the next step is devoting resources and taking action to achieve our desired results. In order to attend each and every live music performance, I had to free up the time and physically get myself to and from the venue, some 22 KM (about 13 miles) from my home.

In marketing, we must free up the necessary resources to connect with potential clients and then convert these connections into meaningful relationships.

The First Lesson

But here’s the first of many lessons learned. It’s really easy to come up with excuses for not doing what we said we were going to do. ‘I’m too tired to travel.’ ‘It might rain.’ ‘I don’t like that kind of music.’ ‘It’s going to be crowded and uncomfortable’…etc.

Similarly, it’s deceptively simple to find excuses for not marketing, regardless of how much we say we want more clients. ‘I am a professional, not a salesman.’ ‘They will probably not take my call.’ ‘I would rather write.’ … etc.

Very early in my musical challenge, I started to hear myself make excuses for not making the trek to one performance or another. When I started to beat these excuses into submission, they seemed to retaliate with taunts of ‘…yeah, but you’ve made the same kinds of excuses about not marketing.’